sometimes we dream big and it’s ok. while some of ’em dreams seem galaxies away, it still pays to have them there. yes, they can look like nothing more than a speck of light but just like stars these little big dreams help light up our dark nights.

TED Talks are available in 100 languages, from Albanian to Vietnamese, thanks to the tireless work of our translators. So far, more than 9,400 volunteers have created the upwards of 40,000 translated talks. To celebrate this huge accomplishment, every week the TED Blog will be bringing you a Q&A with one of our most prolific translators. Today, meet Elena Montrasio.

Where do you live and what do you do by day?

I live in London, U.K. I am a professor of Italian as a foreign language but at the moment I work as a literary translator.

What drew you to TED?

The desire to participate in a volunteer program where I could contribute my skills. That and general interest in the topics that TED deals with.

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Well said. Succinctly said. Space constraints comment reminds me of how the Japanese pay attention to smallness, to detail and presentation. Much more appealing than volume. Advertising gets the concept too….less is more. AN.

Right now I am in the middle of writing a book review of Henri Bortoft’s Taking Appearance Seriously. Having been taught by Henri, and being someone who now teaches Henri’s phenomenological philosophy to business students, his publisher Floris Books sent me his manuscript early, and it has been wonderful for me to read his latest work, especially since his last book The Wholeness of Nature was published in 1996.

Henri’s book is a monumental tour de force, and I can think of no other living philosopher, scientist and author who has the ability to explain in such clarity the evolution of thinking from the time of Plato to this modern age, not only in terms of liner evolution, but also what Henri calls the dynamics of thinking, a dynamical way of seeing which he suggests was the true teachings of Plato and Aristotle, and which came back to…